Hebrews 10:4
For it is impossible that with the blood of oxen and goats sin should be taken away.
Open Hebrews 10:4 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →In the palace
The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Impossibile enim est sanguine taurorum et hircorum auferri peccata.
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- ἀδύνατον γὰρ αἷμα ταύρων καὶ τράγων ἀφαιρεῖν ἁμαρτίας.
Haydock's commentary
On verses 3 to 4
But in them a remembrance of sins is made every year. For it is impossible that with the blood of oxen and goats sins should be taken way. The sacrifices of the former law, even that great sacrifice on the day of expiation, when victims were offered for the ignorances or sins of the priests, and of all the people, were only types and figures of Christ's sacrifice upon the cross, it was impossible that they themselves should take away sins, like that one oblation of Christ, though in them was made a remembrance of sins, and of the same sins for which so many victims had been offered. (Witham)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St John Chrysostom The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on the Epistle to the Hebrews, Hebrews 9.24-26
“For” (he says) “the Law having a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things,” i.e. of the sacrifice, of the remission: “can never by those sacrifices with which they offered continually make the comers thereunto perfect.” ( Ver. 2-9 ) “For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshipers once purged, should have had no more conscience of sins? But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. Wherefore when He cometh into the world, He saith, Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not, but a body hast Thou prepared Me. In burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo! I come, in the volume of the book it is written of Me, to do Thy will, O God. …
St Gregory Nazianzen The Oration on Holy Baptism
XI. Let us then be baptized that we may win the victory; let us partake of the cleansing waters, more purifying than hyssop, purer than the legal blood, more sacred than the ashes of the heifer sprinkling the unclean, and providing a temporary cleansing of the body, but not a complete taking away of sin; for if once purged, why should they need further purification? Let us be baptized today, that we suffer not violence to-morrow; and let us not put off the blessing as if it were an injury, nor wait till we get more wicked that more may be forgiven us; and let us not become sellers and traffickers of Christ, lest we become more heavily burdened than we are able to bear, that we be not sunk with all hands and make shipwreck of the Gift, and lose all because we expected too much. While thou art still master of thy thoughts run to the Gift. …